The election results show a lot of support for conserving land locally and state-wide. The old-boy conventional wisdom is that conservation easements reduce the taxable value of land, but that is not exactly true. I want to look at the nine local conservations easements done by Sebasticook Regional Land Trust, compare their tax rates before and after the easement purchase, and compare tax rates for their neighboring properties as well. I want to compare any tax benefits of a conservation easement to benefits under the Current Use Tax Programs available without an easement. Let's visit some fact-based reality here.

The selectmen are now negotiating with the school superintendent, Heather, to get the old high school lot for the town office. I hope they survive the negotiations with a fair sharing of demolition costs.

One last bit of free floating irony about town politics is that the liberals and the repubs support almost reverse positions of what they do at the national level. I want to contain costs on the whole town office project to $250K (actually I wanted $225K but went with the comittee on the higher amount); the repubs originally wanted a half-million dollar project. The repubs want property assessed high to get higher taxes. I don't want any higher taxes on our little piece of lake front property. So I am all lower taxes and cut spending. I think that makes me a local conservative.